A Conversation with State Assembly Candidates Eon Huntley & Christian Celeste Tate by Liz Pelly
catch the fundraiser party this wednesday featuring Purelink, Chelsea Manning, and more!
People Over Profit: Eon Huntley & Christian Celeste Tate on Protecting Community Spaces & People Centered Politics
An Interview by Liz Pelly
Eon Huntley and Christian Celeste Tate are candidates for the New York State Assembly in District 56 (Bedstuy, Crown Heights) and District 54 (Bushwick, East New York, Cypress Hills, City Line), respectively. They are both democratic socialists running to tax the rich, fight displacement, support universal childcare, and get ICE out of NYC. When I showed up on the first day of canvassing for Eon’s campaign in February, I was excited to see that high on the campaign’s list of policy priorities was a clear support for commercial rent stabilization, which would help protect not only bodegas, restaurants and other small businesses, but also the city’s independent music venues.
On March 11, Gunk will co-host a fundraiser show for Eon and Christian’s campaigns at the Broadway featuring DJ sets from Purelink, Chelsea Manning, Monday Blue, and Simisea and performances by Nara’s Room, Sweet Baby Jesus, and My Wonderful Boyfriend. Ahead of the show, I spoke with Eon and Christian about their backgrounds and campaigns, supporting commercial rent stabilization, and other ways state legislators can help grassroots arts spaces.
Gunk: Can you start by telling readers a bit about your backgrounds and why you are running for State Assembly?
Christian Celeste Tate: I grew up in a working class family, watching my parents really hustle to make ends meet. Sometimes they made those ends meet; sometimes they didn’t. That childhood taught me the importance of organizing to build a better world, because we can’t wait to be saved. If we want things to change, we have to be the ones to change it. As an adult, that’s brought me to community organizing, to DSA, to WFP, to NYCC, to all of the work that I do now. I stepped up to run for this seat because we deserve better than we have, to put it really simply.
Eon Huntley: I’ve lived in Brooklyn my entire life. I was born in East New York, and I’ve lived in Bedstuy for nearly twenty years now. I am a retail worker. I work at Bergdorf Goodman. I come from an art background, and that’s something I carry with me. I went to Parsons for fashion design. I also went to High School of Art and Design. I have two children, a twelve-year-old and a nine-year-old, and they attend public school in Bedstuy and Clinton Hill. My wife has been a public school teacher for twenty years, so we’re very much rooted in a community and in public life.
I grew up in a union household. My mom was a union member. My uncle was vice president for his local in DC 37. I’m a former union member as well. The foundation of who I am comes from my family. My political beliefs are not a radical departure from the people who raised me. They gave me the foundation to enter this space and be an organizer in the workplace. I was also PTA president, and I helped to co-found a food pantry that served the community for four, five years. When my friend and current assembly member from Queens Emily Gallagher met me at a school event, she was like, you should run for office, where you live there is someone who is not delivering on the things people need, on strong tenant protections... And that is what brought me to run in this race.
When you imagine a city where people have universal access to cultural spaces, what does that look like to you?
Eon Huntley: New York is a place that’s known for its artistry, but we don’t do enough to actually support that. A lot of people in the past moved to New York because it’s a cultural hub, but also because you could find a place to live relatively cheap—I’m thinking about Williamsburg and Greenpoint at the time when I was in college and high school. You could easily find a warehouse and create an art collective and really have a shared community.
Ireland just actually launched and made permanent an artist stipend [through a basic income for the arts program]. That’s something that we should make possible. We should be doing more as a state to create spaces for artists, but also to provide the material support that they need in order to pursue those endeavors.
Christian Celeste Tate: Your question makes me reflect on the pandemic as a moment when our society was in turmoil, and it was a lot of DIY art spaces that became the hubs for community building, whether it was mutual aid or art builds for BLM protests, or political education. Art venues near my house do queer chess nights. These are not just spaces to go and observe. These are spaces to participate in.
At the end of 2025 Gunk published a long list of music venues in New York City that had shut down that year due to rent costs, affordability and other factors. This has been an issue for a while—independent, small scale venues disappearing from our city. This is happening in other cities as well. I was wondering what you make of that, and what it says about the city.
Christian Celeste Tate: Unfortunately, this is not something that is specific to music venues. It’s also the restaurants, the pharmacies, the dollar stores that have also been pushed out of our communities, not to mention the people who have been pushed out of our communities. Of course there is a role for our government to play. We live in a city that is structurally and increasingly unaffordable and part of preserving cultural space is about making sure that folks can afford to stay here.
Eon Huntley: We both fully support the commercial rent stabilization bill that [State Assemblymember] Emily Gallagher has introduced, which is supported by [State Senator] Julia Salazar. It would make way for the same sort of rent guidelines board that we have for rent stabilized apartments. This is something that’s really necessary. Everyone deserves to have these kinds of spaces protected. Part of what makes New York the fucking best city in the world is having these places. So let’s not sanitize our city and turn it into a place where only the hyper-capitalists can thrive.
Christian Celeste Tate: Commercial rent stabilization is also something that keeps the bodega on your corner. There was a commercial district needs assessment done in Bushwick a couple years ago across the Myrtle Avenue and Knickerbocker Avenue commercial corridors, and it found that only two percent of storefronts own their buildings. Ninety-eight percent of them are renters. And their ability to make rent every month was the number one thing that those business owners were concerned about, and that was pushing them out of their establishments. Ninety-eight percent is overwhelming. People are telling us really clearly what the problem is, and we can identify solutions pretty easily once we listen to those problems.
Why does commercial rent stabilization not exist already? What are some of the obstacles?
Eon Huntley: Rent stabilization, even for homes, is a constant fight, unfortunately. The real estate lobby, which is the most powerful controlling interest in this city and state, has been fighting it forever. And so it’s the same thing with commercial real estate.
Christian Celeste Tate: Profit is the answer, plain and simple. Every year, hundreds of apartments fall off the stabilization list because landlords withhold them from the market or find loopholes to destabilize apartments. We have a system that has put profit over people for generations. Your right to pursue profit has somehow become more important than your right to have a place to live. That’s heinous. And that’s the product of choices that we’ve made. We can make other choices.
If people want to support the fight for commercial rent stabilization, what can they do?
Eon Huntley: We have an exciting slate of candidates running right now in NY state races. Get involved through these campaigns. Carry this message, talk to your neighbors and people in the community.
Christian Celeste Tate: As with most things, the first step is to find out who represents you, and find out if they are representing you. Because unfortunately, the answer is, oftentimes, that they’re not. And if you live somewhere with a DSA candidate that’s running to actually elevate your voice, then get involved with that campaign. And if you live somewhere where you’re not being represented, and there’s no candidate running to do that, you should run for office.
I also think that this is a nuanced problem. Protecting venues is also about protecting the folks who work there. We’ve seen venues become targets for ICE raids. We definitely need to pursue commercial rent stabilization, and we also need to be thinking about the other avenues to protect both venues and the folks that keep them alive.
Beyond commercial rent stabilization, what are other ways that a New York State assemblymember can support local arts communities and spaces?
Eon Huntley: We’re fighting to tax the rich. Raising tax rates on millionaires and corporations, creating and expanding rent control, passing New York For All so that, as Christian says, our neighbors, friends, and families don’t have to be under the threat that they can be snatched from their home or workplace or just off the street. And also passing Dignity Not Detention, which would also contribute to stopping our ties with ICE. There’s a lot that we can do as legislators to support our communities and to make this a place where we can all thrive, and live the good life that we all deserve.
I’m glad you brought up taxing the rich, because while there are a lot of struggling artists in New York City, we also have some of the richest people and companies in music based right here in New York, including offices of every major record label. Spotify’s US headquarters is New York City. Live Nation has an office here. There’s a lot of music, art and culture-related wealth in New York City. Earlier, you brought up how Ireland has passed a basic income for the arts, and it made me think of how countries like Canada and France have started taxing local streaming profits to support local music funds, too. Can you envision something similar, like a wealth tax that specifically funds artists, or even something like a basic income for the arts in New York State?
Eon Huntley: I think we should, definitely. I think it is possible. As you mentioned, there’s all these corporations that are thriving off of the predatory dynamic that artists are under. That hasn’t changed and has even become more exacerbated with streaming. And so I think that it is incumbent that we have some balance. And I envision a future where that is possible.
Christian Celeste Tate: Unfortunately, the arts kind of exemplify a lot of the inequality that exists across our entire society. And Eon, I’m glad to hear you name it as predatory, because I think that’s exactly what it is. Again, this is not coincidence. This type of inequality does not just happen by accident. This is structural, extractive economics that we’re dealing with.
My short answer to your question is yes, of course. And the longer answer is, the struggle that artists in New York face is an exacerbated version of the inequality that is facing all of us. This is not something that is specific to any one industry. We all should be able to live with dignity and without the constant stress and anxiety that this extractive economy has forced us under. We should all have access to free and public health care. We should all have access to universal child care. We should all have access to affordable housing. Every New Yorker deserves those things. I am excited to have the opportunity, hopefully, to work with folks like Eon to legislate that world into existence for all of us, because nobody should be living under stress about whether or not they’re going to stay in their house next month, or whether or not they can afford to cover their medical debt. Like, come on now. There are hundreds of billionaires in this city and hundreds of thousands of millionaires, and yet, people carry medical debt for preventable conditions. Like, that’s a joke. That’s unserious.
There are so many interesting types of art funding and arts policy that could be discussed, but something I always say is that the most impactful arts policy we could pass in the US would be Medicare For All, because there are so many people who just have to abandon the arts for jobs with health insurance. What role does the state assembly play in the fight for health care for all in New York?
Christian Celeste Tate: 100%, that’s a bill that has sat on the floor of the State House and Senate for years now. I think the assembly in particular has been sort of a bottleneck for public health care in New York. This is an obvious answer to a problem. It is obviously about saving lives, but it is also about, again, extractive economics. Medical debt is the largest cause of bankruptcy in the United States, and something like one in two or three New Yorkers are carrying medical debt every year. This is an obvious answer to an enormous problem, but it requires political will.
Eon Huntley: The New York Health Act would expand Medicare for all through the state. But it’s expensive, and part of that funding has to come from taxing the rich. We have so much revenue, and the status quo is increasingly telling us to do more with less, and we have legislators that are happy to help maintain that, as opposed to being bold and fighting for the things that we know are necessary.
Christian Celeste Tate: And just to be clear, it is expensive sense that we are shifting private spending to public spending. But the cost of health care will go down. We just have to pay for it through taxes rather than through medical debt.
When I think about the role of DIY venues in the city, and trying to make cultural spaces more accessible, I also think about all of these other types of public spaces that already exist, like libraries and parks, that are impacted by the state budget. How do we make sure these spaces and services are funded as well as possible?
Christian Celeste Tate: Libraries have been under siege throughout the Adams administration, and people really feel the consequences of those cuts. Libraries provide some of the most basic things for people. We’re talking about cooling centers when it’s over 100 degrees outside; that keeps people alive. Access to internet —you would be shocked by the percentages of our districts that don’t have access to internet at home. Kids come home from school and hit the library to do their homework, because that’s a public space where they can be safe and do their work.
In terms of the the role of the state legislature, not to sound like a like a broken record, but tax the fucking rich. We’re seeing right now, all this conversation around the city budget and what level of austerity is needed in order to balance the budget. That’s a ridiculous conversation in the richest city on Earth. That’s so unserious. We are only having that conversation because we’re refusing to tax the rich. We should not be deciding whether or not we can afford to give libraries 1% of the city budget, because that money exists. That money is right here. It’s just in the pocket of some instead of the hands of the many. And so the answer is super, super simple. We tax the rich so that we don’t manufacture budget crises, and then the basic investments in things like parks and libraries don’t have to be controversial. They can be expected and demanded.
Eon Huntley: When I think about some of our towering leaders of New York politics and history, like FDR as well as LaGuardia, I think about how they transformed life not just by providing common goods for the social benefit of people, but also the way they supported the arts and creative spaces that still persist to this day in the city and state. It really is incumbent on politicians to lead the way. And as Christian said, fucking taxing the muther fuckin rich. We have all this money here. It’s not just Wall Street that makes New York rich. It’s also a cultural capital. We should be seeing this as a bottom line investment in our communities. Like Christian said, it is a choice. What [we’re seeing now] is manufactured scarcity, and the powers that be, our so-called leaders, are happy to carry that lie, as opposed to addressing the truth of what is going on, and what’s possible, and what should be done in order to have the society we deserve.
hope to catch you all at the fundraiser for these two great candidates this wednesday, march 11th, at The Broadway presented by GUNK featuring sets from some of our favorite local bands (Sweet Baby Jesus, Nara’s Room, My Wonderful Boyfriend) and some sick DJ sets from some crazy acts (Purelink, Chelsea Manning, Monday Blue, and Simisea). Tickets can be acquired here. There will also be state matched funds (up to 12x original!) for donations up to $250 from in-district (Bedstuy, Crown Heights, Bushwick, East New York, Cypress Hills, and City Line residents, HELLO that is u) Hope to see you there <3
xox
Hannah and Ceci
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